Unless, as I have already said, we allow Whitman to be a law unto himself,
we can make little of him; unless we place ourselves at his absolute point
of view, his work is an offense and without meaning. The only question is,
Has he a law, has he a steady and rational point of view, is his work a
consistent and well-organized whole? Ask yourself, What is the point of
view of absolute, uncompromising science? It is that creation is all good
and sound; things are as they should be or must be; there are no
conceivable failures; there is no evil in the final analysis, or, if there
is, it is necessary, and plays its part also; there is no more beginning
nor ending than there is now, no more heaven or hell than we find or make
here:--
"Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and
rectified?"
It has been urged that Whitman violates his own canon of the excellence of
nature. But what he violates is more a secondary or acquired nature. He
violates our social conventions and instincts, he exposes what we cover
up; but the spirit of his undertaking demanded this of him. Remember that
at all hazards he is to let nature--absolute nature--speak; that he is to
be the poet of the body as well as of the soul, and that no part of the
body of a man or woman, "hearty and clean," is vile, and that "none shall
be less familiar than the rest."
His glory is, that he never flinched or hesitated in following his
principle to its logical conclusions,--"my commission obeying, to question
it never daring."
It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones for the sins of us all,--the sins
of perverting, denying, abusing the most sacred and important organs and
functions of our bodies.
V
In Whitman we find the most complete identification of the man with the
subject. He always is, or becomes, the thing he portrays. Not merely does
he portray America,--he speaks out of the American spirit, the spirit that
has broken irrevocably with the past and turns joyously to the future; he
does not praise equality, he illustrates it; he puts himself down beside
the lowest and most despised person, and calls him brother.
"You felons on trial in courts,
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and
handcuff'd with iron,
Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with
iron, or my ankles with iron?"
He does not give a little charity, he gives himself as freely as the
clouds give rain, or the sun gives light; he does not write a treatise on
democracy, he applies the democratic spirit to everything in heaven and on
earth, and redistributes the prizes from its points of view; he does not,
except very briefly, sing the praises of science, but he launches his
poems always from the scientific view of the world, in contradistinction
to the old theological and mythical point of view. It is always the
example, it is always the thing itself, he gives us. Few precepts, no
sermon, no reproof. Does he praise candor? No, he is candor; he confesses
to everything; he shows us the inmost working of his mind. We know him
better than we know our nearest friends. Does he exalt the pride of man in
himself, or egoism? Again he illustrates it: he is egoism; he makes the
whole universe revolve around himself; he never for a moment goes out of
himself; he does not seek a theme; he is the theme. His egocentric method
of treatment is what characterizes him as an artist. He elaborates no
theme, he builds nothing, he carves nothing, but makes himself a source
and centre of pulsing, vital energy. Wave after wave radiates from him.
What we see and get always is Walt Whitman. Our attention is never fixed
upon the writer, but always upon the man.
Of course this method of Whitman of becoming one with his subject, and
speaking out of it, is always the method of the creative artist. It is
this that distinguishes the artist from the mere thinker or prose-writer.
The latter tells us about a thing; the former gives us the thing, or the
spirit of the thing itself.
If Whitman had put his criticism of our time and civilization in an
argument or essay, the world would have received it very differently. As
an intellectual statement or proposition, we could have played with it and
tossed it about as a ball in a game of shuttlecock, and dropped it when we
tired of it, as we do other criticism. But he gave it to us as a man, as a
personality, and we find it too strong for us. It is easier to deal with a
theory than with the concrete reality. A man is a summons and a challenge,
and will not be easily put aside.
The great philosophical poets, like Lucretius, try to solve the riddles.
Whitman's aim is only to thrust the riddles before you, to give you a new
sense of them, and start the game afresh. He knows what a complex,
contradictory thing the universe is, and that the most any poet can do is
to break the old firmament up into new forms. To put his arms around it?
No. Put your arms around your fellow-man, and then you have encompassed it
as nearly as mortal can do.